After years of serving clients as an independent consultant and freelancing with over ten different consulting firms, I started witnessing a stark reality: it has become nearly impossible to differentiate through secondary research and analysis of publicly available data. Every firm has access to the same reports, databases, and analytical tools. The real differentiator — the one that actually moves the needle on critical decisions — has always been primary research.
This became the foundation for CovalentIQ.
AI Is Eating Traditional Consulting Alive—Except What Matters Most
The rise of AI has fundamentally disrupted traditional consulting. Today’s large language models can synthesize public data and generate market analyses in minutes that once took analysts weeks. Secondary research, already quite commoditized, has now been almost completely taken over by AI.
But here’s what AI cannot do: it cannot sit across from a plant manager who’s been optimizing specialty chemical processes for 20 years and decode their capacity expansion logic. It cannot detect hesitation when discussing supplier relationships. It cannot build trust to uncover why a major producer is quietly shifting their product mix.
Primary research captures what exists only in decision-makers’ minds — insights that aren’t indexed by search engines or stored in databases. While AI democratizes access to public information, competitive advantage increasingly comes from proprietary intelligence that no algorithm can access.
Why the Chemicals Value Chain Has Always Been Different
The chemicals industry operates through complex, multi-tier value chains where critical information rarely sees public light. Pricing mechanisms vary dramatically across products and regions, with transactions occurring through bilateral contracts that are invisible to spot indices. For example, capacity utilization rates that determine market dynamics remain closely guarded secrets. Technical specifications driving purchasing decisions exist primarily as unwritten expertise within companies.
Unlike electricity or banking industries where public operational reporting is mandatory, chemicals has always demanded primary research to understand what’s really happening. The real reasons behind plant closures, investment pivots, and strategic shifts emerge only through direct conversations with those directly involved.
Transparency Changes Everything
Throughout my consulting career, I often observed persistent client frustration: primary research within consulting projects has often felt like a black box. Firms might disappear for weeks, conduct mysterious expert calls, and return with conclusions clients had to accept on faith. And even though the firm would operate according to the highest ethical and quality standards, the frustration would still be there, since the clients simply did not see the full picture.
CovalentIQ operates on the opposite principle. Our clients see every step: from expert sourcing criteria to interview guides, from raw transcript excerpts to the logical progression toward recommendations. We document everything at multiple levels, maintaining clear linkage from C-suite summaries back to specific expert quotes.
The Human Edge in Tomorrow’s Markets
After conducting over 1,000 expert interviews across the chemicals value chain, we’ve developed an approach that maximizes the output of every conversation. We know when to push for specifics and when to let narratives unfold. We understand the terminology that separates genuine expertise from educated speculation. We recognize the difference between what experts say on record and what they really mean.
While we embrace the latest AI developments for the groundwork, the highest-value activities remain fundamentally human. Building trust & rapport with skeptical experts, detecting subtle market signals, synthesizing contradictory perspectives into coherent strategies — these require judgment no algorithm can replicate.
Your Next Critical Decision
The question isn’t whether you need primary research — it’s whether you can afford to compete without it. As markets become more volatile and interconnected, the ability to quickly gather ground truth from across the value chain becomes essential for decision-making in today’s increasingly dynamic business environment.
If you’re evaluating an acquisition, validating a market entry, or pressure-testing an investment thesis, let’s discuss how transparent, expert-driven primary research can transform your decision-making process.
The chemicals industry rewards those who see around corners first. That vision comes from one source: disciplined, transparent, human-led primary research.
Looking for bespoke primary research for your chemicals value chain challenge? Get in touch with the CovalentIQ team.